


A Cursive Line

by thewriterofperfectdisasters



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe, Christmas Fluff, Christmas Party, M/M, i mean i'm sobbing slightly and i wrote it, i really don't know how to tag this, steve is in the army???, tbh u can probably guess what this is bc it's like 2am and i am not creative at 2am, they're married??
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-25
Updated: 2016-12-25
Packaged: 2018-09-12 01:29:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9049714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thewriterofperfectdisasters/pseuds/thewriterofperfectdisasters
Summary: On December 21st, Bucky accepted a Skype call from Steve, once more full of apologies for missing another Christmas. Steve asked him about his plans, and nodded encouragingly for Bucky to tell him all about the festivities Natasha would no doubt have organised.‘I’m sorry, Buck. I wish I could be there,’ Steve sighed, parts of his voice coming through slurred and cracked due to the shitty call quality.‘I know, Stevie,’ Bucky nodded. ‘You don’t have to apologise for anything. You just need to keep your head down and get your ass back to me in one piece.’





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [samoosifer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/samoosifer/gifts).



> so me and my buddy [jade](http://thebeefysoldier.tumblr.com/) decided to write each other stuff as christmas gifts bc we're both broke af. this is neither of my initial ideas (lmao surprise) but whatever. it's still festive.
> 
> also i was listening to 'a thousand years' by christina perri and 'turning page' by sleeping at last (title from that, ngl) when i wrote this and i am sobbing hahaha help me

When people asked Bucky how long Steve had been gone, he would tell them, _“Oh, about a year.”_ It wasn’t specific, because if it was, if Bucky told them, _“One year, one month, two weeks, and six days,”_ then they would give him this look of pity. The one where their eyes go soft, and their mouths fight a frown, and they look like they want to say something, but don’t really know what, so it just stays awkward and quiet while they think of some way to steer the conversation back to something safe, instead of his military husband.

So Bucky gave them the vague answer. They would nod and politely ask how he was doing, when he was coming back. Not prying, but also not giving Bucky that goddamn _look_.

Now that it was coming up to Christmas, Bucky was feeling it even more. Steve wasn’t due back until sometime in March, and Bucky could feel his heart aching with every day closer it came, and every day longer since they had been together.

Steve Skyped him, of course, when he could. He always ended their talks with the same thing: _“Love you, Buck. Sorry I can’t come home.”_

Didn’t really help.

_“I know, Stevie. Stay safe, I love you,”_ Bucky would reply, smiling sadly as their connection ended.

That was usually about the time that Nat would call and ask him how he was doing, and about half an hour after that, she would be around with a case of beers and boxes of Chinese food.

Nat had been a lifesaver since Steve had gone. She had taken him in for holidays, birthdays, and mundane celebrations, as well as making sure he stayed sane and fed.

The week before Christmas, she had called him to confirm that he was coming for dinner to her apartment, bringing nothing but himself and whatever gifts he decided to buy for their friends, who would also be in attendance. (Bucky could manage that. He spent a lot of time on Amazon looking at weird stuff he kind of wanted but couldn’t justify spending money on. Christmas was the perfect excuse to buy a yodelling pickle – Natasha’s boyfriend, Clint, would love it, even if Bucky could already feel the daggers Nat would no doubt be glaring at him for it.)

On December 21st, Bucky accepted a Skype call from Steve, once more full of apologies for missing another Christmas. Steve asked him about his plans, and nodded encouragingly for Bucky to tell him all about the festivities Natasha would no doubt have organised.

‘I’m sorry, Buck. I wish I could be there,’ Steve sighed, parts of his voice coming through slurred and cracked due to the shitty call quality.

‘I know, Stevie,’ Bucky nodded. ‘You don’t have to apologise for anything. You just need to keep your head down and get your ass back to me in one piece.’

‘I’m doing my best,’ Steve looked behind him and gave someone a thumbs up. ‘Buck, I gotta go.’

‘Alright, stay safe.’

‘You too. Merry Christmas, I love you.’

‘Merry Christmas,’ Bucky murmured, doing his best to give Steve a convincingly happy smile.

The line went dead, Bucky’s screen going black, with his phone going off moments later.

 

**_Text From: Nat  
_ ** _beer and chinese?_

**_Me:  
_ ** _vodka._

**_Text From: Nat  
_ ** _i'll bring the russian stuff. chinese?_

**_Me:  
_ ** _yeah_

**_Text From: Nat  
_ ** _omw my guy_

Bucky wondered if Steve was letting Nat know when their calls finished so she could check up on him, because her timing was just… uncanny.

‘Damn it, Stevie,’ Bucky said, closing his laptop and heading to his- _their_ bedroom to faceplant the bed. ‘Thousands of miles away and still taking care of me.’ 

 

* * *

 

Bucky wore all black to Natasha’s Christmas party, in spite of the fact that she had two white cats, and his clothes would almost certainly be covered in their fur when he left.

‘In mourning?’ Nat asked him in amusement, as she opened the door to him.

‘ _Your_ boyfriend lives with you full time,’ Bucky muttered, handing her his bag of gift and shrugging out of his jacket. ‘ _My_ husband is overseas in a _warzone_ in a country I’m not even allowed to know.’

‘It’s not a competition,’ Nat rolled her eyes as she watched him hang up the jacket.

‘Yeah, because you hate losing.’

‘Yep,’ Nat said happily, pushing him down the hall to the living room, where their friends had gathered. ‘Bucky’s here!’

A chorus of greetings drifted towards Bucky as they got closer to the room, everyone raising their respective drinks to him, in lieu of actually getting up from their places of Nat’s couch, or various chairs and beanbags.

‘Drink?’ she asked him, depositing his bag of things beside the tree in the corner. ‘We have alcohol, eggnog… other stuff.’

‘I’ll get it,’ Bucky said, heading to her kitchen, leaving Nat with her other guests. ‘Jesus,’ he said, finding all the surfaces in the kitchen covered with food – some ready to be cooked, some ready to be eaten. Her fridge, too, was mostly stuffed, with drinks crammed in random spaces between containers, so Bucky grabbed the first thing he saw, which was a bottle of water. He could do that.

Bucky could hear the group’s laughter from the kitchen as he headed back to them, grabbing a spot on the floor beside Clint and Sam in the beanbags.

‘Okay!’ Nat said, getting the room’s attention. ‘Now everyone is here, we can start with the gifts! I’ll go first,’ she announced, yanking a package from the pile under the tree and throwing it at Tony. ‘Merry Christmas.’

‘Thanks!’ Tony said, ripping into it, and producing an apron with a print of a beer maid on the front. ‘I’ll look great in this, thanks, Nat.’

‘Anytime,’ she replied, tossing something – that Bucky recognised vaguely as his badly wrapped yodelling pickle – to Clint. (Bucky was right; Nat did give him the expression that he recognised as her _“If only I had my knives”_ look.)

It continued this way, with Nat acting as Santa and aggressively throwing gifts at people, occasionally hitting them square in the face.

Bucky ended up with three pairs of socks, a shirt with a picture of a pug dressed as an elf on it, two books, and a small Eevee Pokémon plushie. He was pretty happy with that.

‘I actually have one more present,’ Nat said, once everything under the tree had been handed out, and there was a pile of wrapping paper in the middle of the room. ‘It’s for Bucky, and I haven’t wrapped it, so Buck, you need to close your eyes until I say you can open them.’

‘Are you serious?’ Bucky whined. ‘I don’t trust this.’

‘I promise it’s not a bag of cat shit or anything,’ Nat said, getting up and gesturing for him to close his eyes.

‘Wow,’ Bucky said, folding his hands over his shut eyes. ‘That brings a whole list of things to mind that it could be.’

‘Well, you’re gonna like it.’

‘I have high hopes for this, Nat.’

‘They’ll be met!’ she called back from down the hall, as she headed to her bedroom.

The rest of the people in the room started whispering amongst themselves, and Bucky swore he heard someone slap someone else on the arm and hiss angrily at them. (Probably Pepper. Tony must’ve decided to poke a sleeping bear. Or a temporarily blind Bucky, as it were.)

Bucky heard someone – Nat, obviously, it could only have been Nat – come back into the room, and put something in front of him. Something heavy, apparently, going by the way it thudded against the carpet.

‘Okay,’ Nat said. ‘You can open your eyes.’

Bucky took his hands from his eyes, and kept his head down, opening his eyes slowly and allowing them to get used to the light again, after having had his hands pressed against them hard enough to create those weird patterns that dance across the back of your eyelids.

‘Are your high hopes met?’ asked… not Nat.

Bucky looked up and bit down on his lips, folding them both into his mouth as he nodded slowly. ‘Yeah,’ he croaked, taking in the image of his smiling husband, reaching out to put his hand gently on Steve’s face, just to check he was real. ‘High hopes definitely met.’

Steve laughed, holding out his hand, which Bucky hadn’t noticed held an envelope before. ‘I have a present for you, too.’

‘You didn’t need to get me anything,’ Bucky whispered, taking the envelope, and reluctantly removing his hand from Steve. ‘You’re more than enough.’

‘Trust me, you’ll like this.’

Bucky frowned slightly and slid out the piece of paper inside, struggling to read it through the haze of emotions swirling around in his head.

‘Do you know what these are?’

Bucky looked up helplessly, unable to put anything to words. He still had no idea what was written in front of him.

‘Buck,’ Steve said softly. ‘They’re my discharge papers.’

That was about the time Bucky lost control of his tear ducts, but it didn’t matter, because Steve was _here_ , he was _safe_ , and Bucky could wrap his arms around him, and the paper scrunched in his fist meant he didn’t have to let him go anytime soon.

‘I missed you,’ Bucky mumbled into Steve’s shoulder. ‘So much.’

‘I know,’ Steve whispered, his arms uncomfortably tight around Bucky, but _fuck_ , neither of them were complaining right now. ‘Doesn’t have to be like that anymore.’

‘Thank God, I almost died this time.’

Steve snorted. ‘Same.’

Bucky pulled back, narrowing his eyes as his husband. ‘You what.’

Steve laughed and kissed him, clearly avoiding the question. ‘Later. We have time.’

Bucky smiled, kissing him back. ‘Yeah,’ he agreed softly. ‘We have time.’

 

**Author's Note:**

> hmu on tumblr [@ grumpypunkbucky](http://grumpypunkbucky.tumblr.com) for more shenanigans and procrastinated fics


End file.
